


Carousel

by singtome



Series: Polaris [6]
Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Getting Back Together, Insecurity, M/M, Morning After, Thomas makes pancakes to fix all his problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 01:46:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16777165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singtome/pseuds/singtome
Summary: "Now Thomas is standing at the stove making his famous stress pancakes, still smiling at Newt like nothing at all is wrong, and Newt’s world didn’t nearly end last night.And Newt hadn’t even the decency to put some pants on."(Or: morning afters lead to fears and insecurity.)





	Carousel

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be honest with you, guys, I'm really starting to struggle with the one word title theme for this series. 
> 
> This is just something short and sweet to procrastinate a bigger project, and becasue I've been thinking about the morning after [Retrouvailles](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13745523) for a while now. 
> 
> So, takes place directly after Retrouvailles, probably won't make sense if you haven't read that first, but I'm not going to tell you what to do.

Newt wakes up to cool, newly washed bed sheets tangled around each of his legs, and an empty bed. Blinking against the bright, morning light filtering through the half-drawn curtains, it takes him a fair few seconds for his brain to catch up to the present, and remember that he is not in his own bed. His bed doesn’t have nearly as much wriggle room, and he is always careful to shut the curtains, hating the feeling of waking up to a room full of yellow, sunlit haze.

Newt buries his face back into the pillow and rubs his sensitive eyes, sighing into the mattress. His arm flings out to the right and instantly feels empty space. Newt turns his head. The air beside him rests heavily against rumbled sheets, where a body lay possibly an hour or so before. Specifically, Thomas’ body because this is, after all, Thomas’ bed, where he had been last night but is not now. It is also his house, so he clearly wouldn’t have gone far, unless he’d left to go for a run, which is something he does now, Newt learnt a while ago.

Either way, it doesn’t help the small, unwarranted stab of disappointment that flairs up in Newt’s chest.

They’d been on the same page before they both fell asleep, he thought, but maybe that wasn’t entirely the truth. Or, perhaps, Thomas woke up this morning to find Newt lying next to him, laid there for a brief moment in flashback limbo, and changed his mind about everything.

 _I’m terrified of letting you back in,_ Thomas had said to him, in the early hours of the morning. At the time it had felt like the biggest punch in the stomach, a confirmation of everything Newt had feared for the past couple months; that it isn’t going to happen with Thomas again – not ever – sweet kiss on the stairs be damned.

But then, because he is Thomas, he felt the need to go a flip the situation on its head and tell Newt he misses him, and that he was willing to try and give _them_ another go. It felt like a hundred victories and a thousand failures all at the same time.

Because Thomas shouldn’t have to forgive Newt for anything. 

Groaning, Newt resigns to pushing himself out of the warmth of the bed, ripping himself away from the smell of coconut shampoo on the sheets. Time to get up and start the day, since hiding here for the rest of it isn’t an option. As soon as he is up, Newt’s nose catches something sugary in the air that wafts upward through the house.

He follows the scent downstairs, petrified, for a moment, that Chuck has come home and Thomas is making him breakfast, and he will somehow have to either avoid or face the both of them at the same time. But, reaching the bottom of the stirs, avoiding the one that squeaks, Newt pads into the kitchen to find Thomas – and _only_ Thomas – cooking breakfast.

As it turns out, Newt hadn’t been as quiet as he thought, and Thomas turns around instantly the moment he enters the kitchen. Newt holds his breath, waiting, eyes trained on Thomas’ neutral expression, as though Newt’s presence hadn’t exactly shocked him, but neither was he expecting it. In the end, after a brief silence that stretches longer than he would have liked, Thomas smiles, warm and neutral, and offers, “Morning,” before turning back to the stove.

This is the exact moment Newt realises he’d failed to put on pants before coming downstairs, and now stands in the middle of Thomas’ kitchen in nothing but a thin T-shirt with their old high school’s insignia – an orange scorpion – on his chest. 

“Good morning,” Newt mutters back, tugging the hemline down.

“Sleep okay?” Thomas asks, flipping a pancake.

Newt nods even though Thomas can’t see it. “Uh, yeah,” he says, “You?”

Thomas hums in response and doesn’t elaborate further, and silence fills the space once more. Newt wonders if he should leave. He very much feels like he should leave. Or at least go and get dressed, even though Thomas himself remains in the shirt and flannel pants he’d worn to bed. It means he hasn’t left the house yet, and Newt is unsure if this is a good or bad thing. Still, at any moment Chuck could walk through the front door and find Newt standing in nothing Thomas’ shirt and underwear, and that would be a very bad thing.

But Newt finds himself frozen, hit by an overwhelming case of Deja Vu.

Some months ago, on a Thursday morning just like this one, Newt hand wandered into the kitchen to find Thomas stress cooking and Chuck happily going to town on a stack of pancakes. He slept on the couch then, bundled up in Amelia’s colourful, hand-knit blankets that somehow smelt of roses.

The irony almost knocks him flat on his ass, because this was not a history that was ever meant to repeat, but what happened?

Newt almost ruined everything by trying to fuck Thomas in the swimming pool, is what happened. Because he is a fool who apparently can’t control himself when Thomas is in the equation – _never_ when Thomas is in the equation. Fortunately (though depending on whose perspective) they were interrupted, and Thomas ran away. They still managed to end up in bed together, though not the way Newt had initially intended, thank god. Newt ended up pouring his heart out, and Thomas kissed him like everything was going to be okay.  
  
But now Thomas is standing at the stove making his famous stress pancakes, still smiling at Newt like nothing at all is wrong, like a teenager isn’t scarred for life, and Newt’s world didn’t nearly end last night.

And he hadn’t even the decency to put some pants on.

( _You are going to ruin that boy, Isaac,_ his sister had said to him last night, when she’d pulled him into the next room to yell at him. _No_ , she continued when Newt tried to protest, eyebrows pinched and hand balled into a fist around her lighter, _You can make all the excuses you want, but you and I know very well what happened all year, and what will happen if you keep stringing him along like this._

 _I’m not stringing him along, Liz,_ Newt spat in a furious whisper.

And then, the saddest look he has ever seen pass across his baby sister’s face, directed fully loaded against him, she said, _I really hope so, but we’ll just have to wait and see._ )

Lizzy. She’s probably wondering where he is, most likely furious and waiting for a text or a call that will never come because that’s just what Newt is like.

Newt closes his eyes.

He doesn’t deserve Thomas.

He doesn’t deserve –

“Newt?”

His eyes snap open to find Thomas staring at him expectantly. Newt blinks, “Sorry, what?”

“I said it’s ready,” Thomas says, pushing a stack of pancakes on a plate further in Newt’s direction, inviting. He looks oddly concerned. “You sure you got enough sleep?”

Newt pulls himself back to reality, forcing his legs to walk toward the breakfast bar and take a seat. “Yeah. Yeah, sorry.”

“S’okay,” Thomas mumbles, forcing a too large piece of pancake in his mouth.

Newt looks down at his plate. Blueberry pancakes – fresh blueberries – with a dollop of whip cream in the corner for variation. A stark contrast to how Thomas prepared his own plate; piled high and drowned in maple syrup and cream. Newt cuts off a slice, dips it into the cream, and takes a bite.

“They’re good,” he tells him. “Not too sweet, for once.”

Thomas rolls his eyes, fork in his mouth, mumbling, “Thanks,” without bothering to chew and swallow first. Newt carries on eating in silence, the clinks of ceramic against stainless steel loud in the still quiet of the house.

Newt hates it, the small talk, because it isn’t _them_. He and Thomas don’t do small talk. They do conversations that last for hours and never lose steam. Even when they’re screaming at each other, they always know what to say. This, right here, this constant stream of awkwardness that bounces through the room like they’re at the centre of an old merry-go-round that refuses to finally die, is all wrong. It’s wrapping Newt up in its otherworldliness and driving him mad. 

He gets through half the plate before setting down the fork and starting, “Tommy –” at the same time, Thomas says, “Newt,” and they’re suddenly in a stand-off, sitting in their pyjamas at eleven-something in the morning, staring at each other over blueberry short-stacks. 

Thomas clears his throat, “Uh. Yeah?”

Newt shakes his head, “No, you go first.”

“Right, um.” Thomas shuffles in his seat, and laughs in a way that is both awkward and purposeful, “I actually … don’t remember what I wanted to say.”

Newt feels his lips twitch into a smirk. “Got lost on the way out, did it?” he says. 

Thomas shakes his head, incredulously, “I’m sure I’ll find it later. In, like, a book or something.”

Newt frowns at the odd tone in his voice, “What?”

“Nothing. Look, Newt,” Thomas pushes his plate to the side and rests his elbows on the table, hands laced together in front of him, and all at once he looks like a completely different person; eyebrows furrowed, lips pressed, grey eyes clear and serious. “I’m not going to assume to know what’s going on in your head. Shit, I don’t even know what’s going on in mine most of the time. But …”

Thomas pauses, and Newt feels every cell inside his body freeze.

“But … I don’t regret anything about what I said. How about you?” He asks with a small voice which is retreating in on itself pre-emptively as if Thomas is bracing himself for whatever answer he thinks Newt is going to give, and Newt hates himself a little more.

He was an idiot to think he could have just walked on back into Thomas’ life that easily, that they could have picked up where they left off with little or no difficulty, because it’s _them_ , for christ sake. They turn any situation on its head, for better or worse. The boy looking at him with wide, searching eyes is scared of rejection but terrified more of never trying. This is the same boy who asked Newt to dance with him after they locked themselves out of the school gym in the middle of prom, and swayed to the music with him through the heavy metal doors.

The boy who came to him, crying and scared out of his mind, with a missing mother and a head full of memories that didn’t belong to him, and Newt could only think about himself.

 _What do you want for your birthday?_ Thomas whispered against his lips in the early hours of the morning, and Newt gripped him tight and answered, _You_.

He feels it now, still. Entirely.

“No,” Newt says finally. Disappointment and misinterpretation fill Thomas’ eyes for half a second before Newt continues, “No, I don’t regret it one bit.”

The merry-go-round staggers to a holt, and the atmosphere calms. Thomas’ breath leaves him all at once, and his shoulders drop into a more relaxed angle, and he huffs, “Okay,” as if he’s made it through a minefield unscathed. Newt smiles back, a bubble of laughter escaping him.

This entire scenario feels surreal. Months ago, Newt could never have imagined this happening, unsure whether or not he even wanted it to happen. He wasn’t sure what he wanted back then. It had been Thomas, but not Thomas. He wanted the Thomas that existed before the time jump, the one his Dreams weren’t convincing him was a bad person. It was completely illogical, of course, and he knows this now.

Sometimes, Newt wonders what their lives would have been like up to this point if he hadn’t shut Thomas out of his life. Would they still have ended up here, right now, eating fresh blueberry pancakes? Would they still be in love with one another, or would the overwhelming weight of the Dreams have crushed them long ago?

Would Newt go back and change everything, if it meant they wouldn’t end up here? If it meant they’d be somewhere different, or even better?

Absolutely not.

“Tommy?”

Thomas look back at him, his eyes sharpening into focus from somewhere far away, “What’s is it?”

Newt asks, “Can I kiss you?” because his mouth makes noises on its own accord, nowadays.

Thomas seems to find this funny. “You’re asking permission? Really?” he says, and yeah, okay. Newt attacking him in the pool last night doesn’t exactly equal chivalrous courting.

“Yes,” Newt says. “I am.”

It is going to be like this for a while; Newt knows it is. He is going to be tip toeing around Thomas whether he means to or not, asking before anything, waiting for Thomas to touch him first, to kiss him first, to do whatever he wants first. It’s something he’s going to have to do to make sure that Thomas still wants this, and that _Newt_ still wants this, until one day he won’t have to ask anymore.

Across the island, Thomas says, “Okay then,” and smiles, bright and happy, “Come here.”

Newt jumps off the stool maybe a little too fast, but who cares, because Thomas still wants him and Thomas wants to _kiss him_ , and he hasn’t changed his mind. Thomas pushes him against the island, one hand on his hip and the other balling the fabric at his lower back into his fist, keeping him there. He kisses him deeply. Newt tangles his fingers through Thomas’ hair and plans never to move.

He wouldn’t know how long they stand there, but it’s enough for Thursday’s humidity to begin to give everything an uncomfortable, wet feeling, but for now, Newt couldn’t care less. Above their heads shine decorations from the night before, multicoloured flags spelling out _Happy Birthday!_ They gently sway back and forth from the breeze coming through the open window, and Newt thinks, _Yeah. It is._

Then, the front door clicks open, and a deep groan jolts them to awareness.

Chuck stands in the hallway, looking very much like he resents his entire existence. “Seriously, guys? Still? It’s lunch time, are you kidding me?”

Again, Newt startingly remembers his lack of pants.

“Chuck!” Thomas squeaks, conveniently also realising what this looks like, “I – We – You don’t – !”

Chuck throws a hand up in a _Please shut the fuck up_ gesture, “Nope. No no no, I don’t wanna hear it.” Then, as he flings his backpack onto one of the benches in the mudroom, not a single care to where it lands (over one of Newt’s shoes, knocking it upside down) and looks Newt dead in the eye.

Newt would be lying if he says he didn’t shrink back a little.

“So,” Chuck begins, “You’re sticking around then?”

“I …” The question, the stark directness of it, catches him off guard. He looks at Thomas, finds him gazing right back at him. “Yes,” Newt says. Chuck nods.

“Cool,” he responds, kicks off his shoes and goes up to his room.

They stand in stunned silence for a few moments, Thomas’ mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. It might have been this which sets Newt off, but suddenly he is laughing and can’t seem to stop, head falling on to Thomas’ shoulder. Thomas snorts into Newt’s neck and wraps his arms around his waist, groaning.

“We’re really going to have to make it up to him,” Thomas mumbles into his skin.

“We? He’s your son, Tommy.”

This earns him a sharp pinch. Newt jumps, reeling back but still smiling, unsure if he will ever be able to stop. Thomas, fortunately, looks equally as elated. He leans forward until his forehead is pressed against Newt’s, brushing their noses together. He sighs, deeply, and Newt feels everything in him relax all at once.

“I really missed you,” Thomas whispers, so soft Newt is unsure if he is saying this to Newt or simply repeating the words to himself.

Newt’s heart sinks. “I missed you, too. I’m so sorry.”

Thomas leans away and shakes his head. He kisses Newt again, keeping their gaze locked until their the moment their mouths touch, feather light and sweet, Thomas’ lips curling around Newt’s bottom lip perfectly, tongue tracing the edge of it and sending electric shivers down his spine.

“We should get dressed,” Newt says.

“Yeah,” Thomas hums, not sounding too bothered.

“Hey,” Newt starts, when they eventually pull away. His fingers toy with the edge of the shirt he wears, the one that has ridden up somewhere along the way, nervous. “Do you want to go for a walk, or something? We can stop at the diner, if you want. I mean, I know we just had breakfast and all, but –”

“I would,” Thomas answers, graciously stopping Newt before he rambles himself into a six-foot-deep hole. Thomas smiles at him, and everything in the world feels suddenly better. “Yeah. I’d love to.”

*

**Author's Note:**

> Just for fun, wrote this with [this song here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi8Y5ZEfMO8) playing on loop, so enjoy if you want. 
> 
> Come yell with me on [tumblr](http://singt0me.tumblr.com/) here.


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